


The Color Of Your Heart

by KrinnDNZ



Series: NaPoWriMo 2014 [1]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Chandra Nalaar gets all the ladies, F/F, Niv-Mizzet Draco-genius, Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, Niv-Mizzet's colossal ego, my gender is "dragon"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrinnDNZ/pseuds/KrinnDNZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chandra Nalaar and Liliana Vess have what you'd call a permissive relationship with one another. When Jace Beleren runs into an unanticipated consequence of being The Living Guildpact, Chandra and Liliana have an opportunity to expand that relationship - if Liliana can bring herself to open up to both in the face of danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Color Of Your Heart

Liliana looked put out: it was a little tricky to see her face properly as the wind whipped her hair, but Chandra, having seen much of her irritated face, was quite sure that she was wearing it. "I promise there was a building here last time!" she shouted. It didn't seem to help, so she twisted around in the air to check how much falling time was left. As she turned, the tops of the tallest buildings zoomed by, walls a blur, smaller buildings gleaming as they approached: though the gaps between them were sizable, from a distance they looked like mere cracks.

Chandra left a trail of sparks and Liliana little puffs of fog as both reached out vigorously for a connection to Ravnica's mana. On top of the usual mana hiccup upon arriving on a plane, there was a disturbance in the æther, interfering with both planeswalkers' efforts. Liliana screamed in anger. There was a keening, avian cry, and Chandra whooped in exultation: blotting out the bright noonday sun came a roc, shadowing both for a moment, then leaving them lit again as it folded its wings and dived. There was a moment of intense turbulence as it barreled past them, a gleaming, armored figure on its back as it twisted. Its dive reversed in a weightless, graceful flourish, and speeding upwards, it snatched Chandra and Liliana in massive, rough-scaled talons.

Wingbeats shook them as the roc ascended, then found a thermal and spread its wings, placidly gliding as the two mages caught their breath. A harness wrapped around its chest, carefully shaped to keep its wings free, made of thick leather straps and metal loops and buckles shiny from long abrasion by the leather. Atop the harness sat a skyknight in her saddle with the red armor accents and sunfist imprint of the Boros Legion. She leaned over to one side, spotted Chandra, and broke into a wide grin. Chandra waved at her and grinned back awkwardly, the roc's talons still around her chest.

The skyknight guided her roc firmly, and moments later they were on a spacious balcony with planters and sculptures all around its edge. Chandra and Liliana picked themselves up slowly, still panting. The skyknight's thick leather gauntlet clapped down on Chandra's armored shoulder and pulled her up.

"Chandra!" she said delightedly, pulling her helmet off.

Chandra's face lit up in turn. "Broski!"

She laughed patiently. "Brozowski."

Chandra turned. "Lily, this is Brozowski, my Boros broski, she's awesome."

When she turned back, the skyknight gave her an enormous hug and a brief kiss: Chandra invited herself to a longer, messier kiss and a hand under the armored part of her skirt, fingers digging into the leather of her breeches. Liliana crossed her arms and put her mouth to one side impatiently. The kiss wrapped up, and Chandra smiled brightly.

"How's your wife?"

Liliana muttered, then raised one long-fingered hand and covered her eyes, forefinger and thumb on her temples. Brozowski laughed and took a half-step back, turning over her helm in her hands. She made a brief, pained smile.

"Doing fine, by the angels' grace: there was an awful mess of a brawl here not quite a full moon-cycle ago. Half-done Simic sky swallower experiment got loose, ended up flying through a nasty industrial cloud and picking up toxins: went wild and started developing acid sprays. Over thirty buildings it just snapped right through and sent straight to Undercity rubble! My Valeriya would've been there that day right in the middle of the wreck an' it hadn't been for her being called up by the lawmages as a witness."

Chandra gasped and put her hands over her mouth. "Whoa. That's terrifying!"

Brozowski nodded and fidgeted with her helmet. "We were both well an' truly rattled that night, and a while after. You do as well as you can to protect people you love, but there's always something huge, dangerous, and scary out there that can wreck things in a big hurry."

"I bet." Chandra patted her shoulder.

"Thanks." She lifted her helmet. "I should get back to patrol and back to her. It's always good to see you, but I've already got two wives: Valeriya and duty."

"Wouldn't dream of keeping you from either of 'em. Fly strong, bro."

"Burn bright, Chandra."

After a brief, much more chaste kiss with Chandra, Brozowski made a crisp, polite salute and a faintly apologetic smile at Liliana, then with a grunt mounted her roc. The huge bird hopped to the balcony, glanced about dartingly, then tipped forward and dived with another long cry. A pause. Chandra smiled hopefully at Liliana.

"Told you was a building there before."

"You _total jerk!_ " Liliana erupted, hands on hips. She waved a bat-winged pendant for emphasis. "You would've gotten yourself _really killed_ if it hadn't been for that roc-rider and I wouldn't have been able to do _anything_ about it and I'd have felt _really bad!_ What the hellfire-guzzling zombierot were you _thinking!?_ "

Chandra waved her hands placatingly. "Oh come on, babe. You've played with that pendant before, it's got wings, it's kinda obvious. I know you always have plans. You'd have been fine."

"And you _wouldn't!_ "

Chandra paused, then looked aside, changrined. "I'd figure something out," she said lamely. "There's lots of skyknights, really. And the bottom actually is a real far way down. There's time to think of stuff."

Liliana jabbed at Chandra's chest with the pendant, one of its wings clinking against her breastplate.

"What if you didn't? Huh?"

"You don't have to _save_ me," she snapped. "Really."

Liliana took a deep breath, stopped her shoulders from shaking, then shook Chandra by the breastplate, slim fingers far stronger than they looked.

"I'd _really miss you!_ " she said angrily, then flung herself into a hug.

Chandra carefully hugged her and patted her back.

"I'm sorry, babe. I'm not going anywhere. Seriously. You know I'm not gone yet because there hasn't been a big enough explosion."

Liliana looked up and smirked, then stepped out of the hug, dusted herself off again, and fussed over the pendant. She pulled her cloak back together over her bare shoulders and ran one hand along its trim.

"Don't make me save you," she said, more quietly. "Seriously."

Chandra smiled widely and spread her arms. "I promise not to need saving from anything _I_ set on fire, how about that?"

"It'll do."

They shared a brief, soft kiss, then departed by stair and steamweird-powered lift and air-gondola towards the ten shining towers of Guildpact Plaza.

* * *

"I promise you look fine," Lavinia said, sighing patiently. "The uniforms - no, seriously, don't mess with that buckle - the details matter - the uniforms are part of a multi-century legacy of impartial justice and you're stepping into that and that's perfectly fine for the Living Guildpact to do because you work as hard as you can to be impartial. Besides you'll have your clothes or yourself fixed up soon enough."

Jace scowled.

Lavinia paused, then cautiously added: "Well, you'll probably want to keep two sets of clothes. In case."

Jace glared at her with arms awkwardly crossed.

Lavinia made an impatient flick of her hands, palms-up. "You look fine. Really, think of it this way: more than half of the guild leaders now find it easier to empathize with you. And probably you with them."

Jace Beleren the Living Guildpact, planeswalker, secretist, and avatar of Ravnican inter-guild law, uncrossed her arms from beneath breasts she hadn't had the day before, rolled her shoulders against the still-awkward weight of an Azorius justicar's armor, put one hand against an unfamiliarly smooth cheek, and sulked. She pulled her thick blue cloak around her, its cowl resting on her shoulders and back as her fingers kneaded its warmly familiar hem.

Lavinia took a step to one side to catch her eye, putting a hand out and taking a conciliatory tone.

"The idea that your duty of justice - and for you in particular, of the Guildpact - is allowed to be more important than whether you're a man or a woman, is, I promise you, one that every lawmage in the building will salute you for. To the Azorius, you're going to be a living example of that choice. A living example of our virtues."

" _Swell,_ " Jace snapped.

"You could take a day to work on it," Lavinia suggested.

Jace crossed her arms, then re-crossed them to accommodate her breasts. She stood up straight for a moment.

"I do have appointments," she said with a quiet sigh. "Adjudications. Negotiations."

Lavinia lowered her voice to match Jace's. "Those things don't go away, no. You have the duty you've chosen. But being the Living Guildpact doesn't make you immune to being tired, irritable, and off-balance. You really could take a day off. A real day off, not leaving the city and disappearing," she said with a trace of annoyance at the end.

Jace took a deep breath.

"I'll be fine. I've got this." She rubbed her temples briefly. "Ugh, I wish I'd put more effort into when-I-get-polymorphed contingency plans."

"You have a plan for that?"

"I have a lot of plans. It's working out pretty well for me. Overall."

Lavinia patted her shoulder encouragingly. "Attagirl." A brief, awkward pause, the hand withdrawing. "Boss."

Jace nodded and pulled her cloak around herself. "All right. What's in the docket today?"

They began to walk, leaving the suites of the Lyev guards and traversing the polished, austere hallways of the Hall of the Guildpact, soon descending a grand stairway towards the high-ceilinged audience-chamber where Jace accommodated petitioners. Lavinia brandished a flat slate of message-crystal, tapping on it with a stylus and sorting a list that glimmered on its surface, reading from it as they went.

"The three parties at the head of the queue today: Simic biomancers about a permit for treefolk-based experiments, Selesnya amicus brief about same. Boros minotaur patrol with a complaint regarding the House of Secrets. Rakdos musician requesting permission for a performance that involves architecture, a Gruul shaman and an Azorius justicar both with amicus briefs about same."

Lavinia continued summarizing the cases in her cultivated, well-controlled voice until they reached the bottom of the stairs. The various petitioners were around the perimeter of the room, a healthy distance back from the long stem-and-bulb dais from which Jace heard and debated cases (not coincidentally, one that made it easier for her to reach the eye level of beings like the hulking minotaurs of the Boros delegation, the living tree the Simic had brought, and the stern-faced Selesnya centaurs). Standing on the dais, drawing irritated glances from the petitioners, were a woman in a flowing, immodest black dress and a woman in adventurer's armor, its metal and leather all tinted red, a pair of goggles pushed back on her brow.

"And unscheduled guests," Lavinia said disapprovingly.

Liliana raised her arms, her gauzy cape trailing from them, as she approached the pair.

"Jaaaace!" she crooned.

"Liliana."

"How've you _been?_ Looking good there. That armor comfortable?"

Chandra, coming up to stand beside Liliana, stared openly at Jace's bosom and raised her eyebrows. Lavinia, standing to Jace's side and a little behind, put her hands on her hips and scowled. Liliana side-eyed Chandra, then ahemed pointedly.

"What?"

"You're ogling."

"Well yeah. She's fuckin' stacked compared to last time I saw her." A protesting huff came from Jace's direction as Chandra continued. "I'm just getting used to that. Adapting to change. You know."

A hopeful smile met with a flat, pursed-lip look of disapproval from Liliana. Chandra put her hands up in concession.

"Okay, okay, I'll try not to."

"I'm _right here,_ " Jace said sharply.

"Chandra, honey, look—can you give Jace and I a minute? Go make pals with the minotaurs. They look like they could use some cheering up."

"Fiiiiine."

Liliana coaxed her over and kissed her forehead, prompting a wide, cheery grin from Chandra: she hopped down from the dais and practically skipped as she approached the Boros delegation. Jace sighed in relief, letting her shoulders relax a little.

"Thank you."

"Mmmhmm. Earnestly, how are you? I had a guess that something like this might happen. When I put the pieces together, I decided to drop by. I see my timing was good."

"Did you know this was happening?" Lavinia asked sharply.

"Oh perish the notion." Liliana waved casually. "I guessed. I am a good guesser. Was it the Simic? They do love using their bodies as a medium. I appreciate bodies as canvases. But really any of them could have brought a female Guildmaster to power and shifted the balance."

Jace's eyes jittered back and forth for a moment, then she nodded.

"Got it now. Give me a minute: I _am_ connected to the guilds, so I can just ask the Guildpact how many of them have women at the top."

She stared into space. Lavinia raised an eyebrow archly at Liliana.

"Do you mind explaining to me promptly just what you're talking about with my boss who, might I remind you, is vitally important to keeping this city from falling apart?"

Liliana made a smug grin back at her.

"She's the living Guildpact: she doesn't just judge the guilds, she's affected by them. So as long as the guilds were run five and five by men and women, Jace would stay the way she was. But it's not as though five and five is written into the guildpact. Things change. Angels fall, sphinxes rise. I thought to myself, well, it'll be worth showing up to see what happens if it becomes, say, six and four."

"Are you saying you manipulated a Guildmaster?"

Liliana gave her a condescending look.

"There's only one person in the room who can tell the guild leaders what to do, and it's not me."

"They were actually four, four, and two until recently," Jace broke in.

"What?"

Both stared at her incredulously. As she opened her mouth to reply, there was a happy yell from the perimeter of the room, and all three turned. Chandra yelped gleefully, riding on a minotaur's shoulders, hair aflame, arms spread and raised, little flames dancing around them. The other minotaurs stood near, laughing, clapping, and joking.

"Look at me, I'm a dragon!" she shouted at Liliana.

Jace put her fingertips on her forehead, hands in front of her face.

"I _cannot handle her,_ tell me you've got her under control, this is not the day I planned on having."

"I can keep her cooled down," Liliana said soothingly. "I promise she's not going to set anything of yours on fire."

Jace took a deep, exasperated breath, then folded her hands at waist level and resumed.

"Four men, four women, and two who are neither men nor women."

"Neither men nor women?" Lavinia spluttered.

Jace and Liliana both gave her skeptical looks, then glanced at each other.

"Neither men nor women," Jace said patiently. "There are a lot of categories."

Lavinia pursed her lips and muttered something about scofflaws, prompting Liliana to roll her eyes. Jace continued patiently.

"But now instead of four-four-two, thanks to a certain know-it-all dragon, we've got five-four-one and here I am. Which seems to confirm your… guess."

"Which in turn was as good a reason as any to come around, talk about craft, and maybe enjoy private time like before."

Jace looked down at herself.

"Wait, like this?"

Liliana blew her a kiss. "Wouldn't have come around for the shape you were in last time."

"Is that how you're going, these days? Are you just done with men?"

Liliana pointedly looked over at Chandra, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth and listening intently as a Simic biomancer projected flickering blue images on the towering treefolk that both stood under, diagrams of the wooden being projected on its own surface. Jace followed her gaze. They watched Chandra raise her hand and ask a question that was answered by a Selesnya centaur gesturing vigorously, the biomancer staring in disapproval at the interloper. They looked back at one another, and Jace nodded, one hand on her chin.

"I suppose that's how you're going, these days."

Liliana simply nodded.

"Besides, I have appetites," she said. "It appeals to some of them, to think I'd be your instructor while you're enjoying this body."

"Well you've certainly had one like this for longer than I have."

"Come to think of it, when _did_ that happen? Recently, from how you talk about it."

Jace ran her fingers through her still-short black hair, leaving it faintly spiky. "This morning. Over breakfast."

Lavinia sighed.

"Which, of course, was at her desk. We had to get her into a spare justicar's uniform. Her old top was a lost cause, and the leggings were looking imperiled."

"You had a spare uniform that fits a chest like hers?"

Jace made an indignant noise, cheeks flushing. Lavinia put her mouth to one side.

"We had to let out some straps," she said in a confidential tone. "Relax some hems."

Liliana nodded sympathetically.

"Mmmhmm. I think that's not the only thing she needs to relax."

"Tell me about it. I can't remember the last time she took a self-care day."

"Again, I'm _right here._ "

"Yes, you are. You're right there because you won't take a damn vacation even when a scantily-clad woman walks into the room and says almost in so many words she wants to go have sex with you."

"I definitely want to go have sex with her."

There was a crackle of flame and a series of pops from the perimeter of the room: Jace and Liliana both whipped their heads around. Chandra was dancing frenetically with fist-sized orbs of fire zipping around her body, pausing periodically as a lithe Gruul elf did her own dance, mimicing Chandra's movements, then improvising from them and sending back a challenge that Chandra mirrored in turn. Rakdos cultists, spread out into a semicircle, watched them both with nods of approval.

They turned back towards one another, smiling. Lavinia gave them a moment, then cleared her throat.

"Boss. You know these two already, right? It sounds like you had something in the past with this lady from the House of Secrets, and it wasn't a bad something?"

"It wasn't. It was a pretty reasonable something."

"Good. Listen. I have seen lawmages eroded and ground down by duty. The ones who are enduring pillars of law and duty, are the ones who remember that a pillar doesn't just need to be built, it needs to be maintained, and that it's okay that the pillar is not supporting anything while it's in the middle of being maintained. Maintain yourself. There's someone here that you like, offering affection, offering help and maintenance. Take the offer."

Liliana nodded along with Lavinia during the conversation, carefully keeping her mouth shut. At the end, Jace looked up at her. She smiled politely.

"I'd like for you to take a day for maintenance and come with me."

Jace looked back towards Lavinia, who raised her eyebrows pointedly and put one hand out, palm up, waving towards Liliana.

"Can we visit Niv-Mizzet first?" Jace asked Liliana. "I don't want to be as surprised by leaving this shape as I was by getting into it."

"Good idea!" Liliana said heartily. "Let's do that."

"I'll handle the petitioners," Lavinia said firmly.

Jace smiled at her. "Thank you. I'll work on not getting eroded."

* * *

Hours later, during the journey between the Plaza of the Guildpact and the Aerie of Nivix, the sky exploded. A sooty cloud burst into black tendrils, obscuring the sunset, the tentacles grabbing hold of the planeswalkers' air-gondola and tearing it apart like a rotten log in a giant's grasp. Mana crackled around each of them as they slowed their falls, Chandra flaring brightly as she found a handhold on a wall, swung her feet around against it, and surfed down in a wave of flame, Jace taking on a hawklike aspect as she flew with her cloak billowing, Liliana wreathed in chilly fog.

The wreck of the air-gondola fell past them, its steam-weird pilot dissolving with an angry hiss back into a slop of water and a brief sizzle of flame. It landed with a great crash as it tore a hole in the wall of a Selesnya garden, leaving rubble strewn on the street and on the steps of the Orzhov church that stood across from the garden. On the steps of the church, one arm raised as shadow-tendrils returned to it, stood the gorgon with a blade in her raised fist, bellowing with cruel laughter and letting her eyes glow orange.

"Beleren! Vess!" she bellowed. "Approach, succumb, watch me bring ruin to the things you love!"

As the planeswalkers landed, watching her warily as each drew on mana and assumed a defensive posture, the gorgon spread massive shadowy wings, an obsidian sword in one hand and a granite dagger in the other.

"Vraska," Jace said cautiously. "The wings are new. Did you get taller?"

Vraska made a sarcastic half-bow, then blinked and stared at Jace incredulously, mouth pulled to one side.

"Wait. Jace? Really?"

"What?"

"I mean, not that you're hard on the eyes, but last time we met you didn't have the huge frontside."

Jace cursed and flung out her arm, blue tendrils of light zapping out, then converging as a manta-ray-like creature flapping towards Vraska aggressively. The gorgon carelessly struck it with her sword when it approached, and shards of blue glow were lost in the darkness of her wings.

"Oh come on," she taunted.

With a flourish, she struck the steps with her sword: marble cracked, then bubbled, going liquid as stone imps clawed their way up out of it, knee-high to the towering Vraska, hissing and clacking their marble claws. As a crowd of them surged forward, they were met by a pack of zombies following imperious gestures from Liliana. Stone cracked, flesh tore.

"I have the lovely privilege of mixing business and pleasure," Vraska practically sang, her dagger whipping about in the air as stone caltrops sprang up around her. "My business is reminding Liliana Vess who she works for. My pleasure is watching Jace Beleren realize that she can't stop me."

Jace's feet were several inches from the ground and her cloak was waving as though in a high wind, wriggling blue creatures emerging periodically: runes floated in the air around her, periodically darting aside to land on Liliana or Chandra and evaporate. A cold smoke was around Liliana, ankle-deep, extending several feet around her. Orzhov thrulls shambled from the church's outbuildings to her side, then grimly towards Vraska.

As the two of them stood their ground and focused their attacks on the gorgon's forces, Chandra dashed, leapt, and climbed over rubble, intermittently pausing to loose waves and darts of flame at Vraska and her imps. She made her way through the boulders and the wreck of the air-gondola, then perched halfway up the V-shaped hole in the wall, taking advantage of the wall's thickness to use it as a perch and rain bolts of fire down on Vraska.

Half the bolts disappeared into the shadows of Vraska's wide, menacing wings, but one struck her directly, making her howl, burning half her dress off. Her howl became a roar, eyes glowing brightly, a similar coal-orange glow coming from her mouth as she threw her head back. Her wings stretched, flapped, and expanded still further as she grew taller, her skin going black, a pair of towering, recurved horns rising to complement her snakes. Soon she towered over Jace and Liliana: with a great stomp she raised a fence of stone spears between herself and them, launching herself into the air in the same motion.

Jace's creations flew easily, but Vraska continued to swat them from the air. She sported a tail with a glowing spike at its tip, whipping back and forth, trailing smoke. She ascended—then with a sudden spasm of motion, darted forward, using mightily taloned feet and one hand to dig into the wall, her free hand grabbing hold of Chandra. Chandra kicked her chest, then winced and cursed. Vraska, her hand around a struggling Chandra's throat, simply turned her head to face Liliana and Jace.

"I could fight you," she sneered, "and crush you. But one of you is becoming my servant, and the other's being reminded of just who she belongs to. This is about sending a message."

"It's a message for you too," Liliana yelled up at her. "I know who you just made a deal with, who you asked for power, who granted it just a minute ago. And I know that they're lying to you. You've checked on what they've said. It's good, isn't it? They're lying to you by letting you believe things. Believing you can take on all three of us, in a wide public place at that! You already fell for it once by asking for more. _You're_ being reminded who you belong to! You'll ask for more and they'll give it and you'll never get enough from them to free yourself."

The demonic gorgon flapped one wing dismissively at Liliana.

"Jealous little girl!" she jeered. "You don't think I can handle power like you can. I've got more of my own than you think. Enough to take you on. Enough to take _two_ of you on."

With a cruel laugh, she turned back to Chandra, eyes this time glowing green. Her hairsnakes hissed in unison and joined her face in focusing on Chandra, unflinching as the fire-mage, with gritted teeth, punched her square in the face with a smoldering fist. Jace and Liliana's yells were mixed with the clatter of stone imps from the steps and obsidian bats that fluttered from the shadow of Vraska's wings.

Chandra winced, then gagged as she moved more and more slowly, paler and paler. Vraska hissed in satisfaction. Chandra's clothes and armor took on a bleached, pale cast, but her skin went chalkier and chalkier, smoothed over, hair freezing in place and losing color. Speechless, she strained to move until her eyes went opaque and stony and Vraska released her throat: a rough clunk of stone on stone as she rested against the broken stone of the wall.

"I'll certainly find a place for _you_ among my trophies," Vraska hissed before turning away.

When she landed, across an utterly empty street from the remaining two, she gave them a haughty stare. Jace's fists were clenched, and the white lines on her jaw and cheek glowed. Liliana's face was death and cold vengeance.

"I _was_ in a good mood today," she said in a voice of dangerous politesse. "So you're going to get exactly one chance to turn her back before I decide that—what was that charming phrase? Bringing ruin to the things you love, is the best possible use of my time and energy across the whole multiverse. And remember, I know who you work for."

"To turn her back, and then _get out of my city,_ " Jace snarled.

Vraska simply boomed with contemptuous laughter. Liliana spread her arms, looking thinner, practically skeletal, the traces of her body-wide scars faintly visible again. Jace's head jerked up as she saw an orange glow.

Above them, the statue of Chandra Nalaar was developing cracks - muddy, then orange, then glowing cherry red. There was a tinkle of falling rock as chunks fell away, disrupting small bits of rubble. Larger rock fragments fell a moment later. Vraska scowled at Jace, then caught the way that an orange glow was falling on her and whirled around.

Chandra was painful to look at, her hair a furnace, an incandescent aura around her, a titanic sword of flame in her hands. Her voice was volcanic and groundshaking, her radiance left harsh shadows all around.

" **I WAS BORN WITH FIRE IN MY VEINS!** "

She leapt forward with an arc of flames behind her, her sword at first over her head, then descending with terrifying swiftness. Vraska flinched. Her wings disappeared into shadows, followed by her body just as the corona around Chandra's sword met it, mana throwing sparks as Vraska fled to another plane. Chandra landed on one foot and one knee, the sword striking the ground and sinking in where it landed, instantly transformed into a long puddle of lava.

"Gone," Jace said with a growl, hands up as she examined the flow of mana.

"Oh good," Chandra said in an absent voice, standing, then swaying. "Hey Lily I'm gonna fallovernowcoulduseyourhelpwiththat."

Liliana rushed forward and caught the staggering, smoldering fire mage as embers fell to the ground around her. Chandra slumped, too enervated to raise her arms and return Liliana's hug. A moment later, Jace stepped in to add her support: they raised Chandra's arms and held her between them. Liliana looked at Chandra, pursed her lips worriedly, and then kissed her forehead. Chandra mumbled gratefully, her eyes closed. Liliana looked up at Jace.

"If I read it right, she made another deal, took on another debt, to get away like that. That's at least two in one day. Three if she was unlucky and started the whole thing today. I've seen a lot of people make deals with Those Below, and I've seen a lot of people get close to coming out on top of those deals. I've never seen someone who was hungry or stupid enough to incur three debts in one day get anywhere remotely close to coming out on top."

"So you think she's not coming back?"

"Well, if she decided that coping with three poorly-considered debts to Those Below was less likely to lead to an eternity of pain and suffering than dealing with _me,_ she was right."

Jace nodded slowly, then glanced up and away.

"I hear griffons coming. Let me take care of this part and you just hold onto Chandra?"

Liliana nodded grimly. She sat with Chandra at the bottom of the steps, leaning against the plinth of a grotesque Orzhov statue, held her, and watched her breathe. In time, a Boros battlefield medic arrived, practically dragged as Jace pulled her by the shoulder. Liliana did her best to hold her tongue through medical patter, bit her lip when Chandra woke up again, and sighed in relief as Chandra remembered the medic's name and reminisced about the last time they'd seen one another.

An anecdote about gargoyles passed between them, and Liliana stopped listening, turning her head to look for Jace. She smirked when she saw Jace with her hands raised, alternating between making broad gestures at a trio of diminutive Orzhov clerics together with the Selesnya centaur gardener looming over them and plucking thought-fragments from the air as Lavinia watched disapprovingly from a small distance away. When she turned back to Chandra, she was flexing pink, newly-healed fingers and smiling hopefully up at Liliana.

At Lavinia's insistence, they travelled the rest of the way to Nivix with Jace's corps of Lyev honor guards, going by street in an armored palaquin atop an eight-legged Simic alligator-shark of burden. Strands of blue-green lights lit the palaquin's interior, lending it a seascape look. The three mages sprawled in an enormous pile of pillows and napped, bodies pressed together.

* * *

When they entered her workshop, Niv-Mizzet was up on her hindlegs, forelegs both elbow-deep in massive gleaming structures like loose gauntlets made of scaffolding instead of solid metal. A rumbling, crackling ball of energy floated above her, a complicated array of mirrors and antennae around it, moving in response to the dragon's flexing claws. Jace shouted over the noise of the blue energy-ball, and the dragon dissipated it, withdrew her forelegs, and fell to all fours. She leaned forward and gave Jace a curious, scrutinizing look up and down, then pointedly stared at her chest.

"Don't those make your back hurt?"

Jace put a hand over her face and closed her eyes in annoyance. Chandra snickered. The dragon leaned back and sat on her haunches.

"Welcome travelers," she rumbled. "I'm making time for you, please make that a good idea. I prefer having good ideas."

Chandra stepped forward.

"I think getting to the point is a good idea!" she said brightly. "We're kinda wondering why you were not a lady dragon until today and now you're a lady dragon. I personally don't mind a whole lot because Jace ended up really pretty. But she minds. So can you help her out, tell her what's up?"

Blue-white electric runes sparkled around the dragon's head for a moment before she replied.

"Oh, I see what happened. No. I wasn't a dragon 'bull' yesterday and I'm not a dragon 'lady' today. I'm a _dragon._ What happened was that I moved along my cycle and Azor the First, the wise and just Living Guildpact, or both, didn't think carefully about guilds being run by nonhuman persons. A possibility I wouldn't have omitted," she added primily. "Since my genitals are all that changed, and it's merely my cycle moving along rather than a change in my state of mind, I conclude that that's how the Guildpact works." She raised a displeased, scaly eyebrow. "Is there anything else obvious and pedestrian about dragons that you need me to point out for you?"

Liliana quickly stepped in front of a mid-snarl Chandra.

"How long does the cycle last?" she asked. "Or, how long does this segment last?"

"Repeating lifelong, and a few centuries, respectively," the dragon replied in an indifferent tone. "Quickly enough to ensure that I don't get bored with myself." She glanced over at Jace. "If you're particularly attached to how you were before, you could ask Zegana for help. She experiments on herself often enough. I don't thinking asking a biomancer to work on you directly, would help; you'd need to change the guilds' leaders, not yourself. For myself, I'm only attached to this form, the one that I've sculpted, chosen, and perfected, which wasn't much of a task given that I was fortunate enough to start as a dragon."

Chandra tilted her head curiously.

"Wait, hold on, _how_ did your junk change? That's on a schedule?"

"Little spark," Niv-Mizzet said with a voice of tangible patience, "my genitals are none of your business. _You're_ not going to be touching them."

Chandra threw up her hands and sighed. Jace joined the pair, standing to Liliana's left, and Niv-Mizzet smiled at her.

"You've finally got concupiscent mates!" she purred. "Congratulations. That one lawmage who looks out for you, she must be so relieved."

"She did convince me that it was the right time to take a day off," Jace said drily.

"I can see that. You look like you less took a day off and more like a day tried to off you."

Jace looked at her scuffed armor, then at Chandra's armor and its scorchmarks, then at Liliana's torn clothes.

"Close. A creature of night tried to off me. Us. Chandra."

"Was it that gorgon?"

"It was her. With demons' magic backing her up. She was channeling a flavor of magic that definitely wasn't Ravnican."

"I know where it was from," Liliana said quietly.

The massive dragon leaned forward with interest, headfrills flexing back and forth slowly.

"Where are the remains?"

"She fled. I strongly suspect she's not even on Ravnica anymore. We didn't have the resources to pursue."

Niv-Mizzet drummed her claws on the flagstones thoughtfully.

"Well, perhaps I'll seek out Miss Stoneface Snakehair some time, considering that now she's not just threatening my ongoing research in you, but presenting a tasty subject herself. Brash little girl."

"Not that you owe me anything, but I'd find it really convenient if you did that," Liliana interjected. "The reason she had that flavor of magic is that she's working for people who've been making my life hard for a while. So I'm in favor of archmage genius dragons making her life, or theirs, hard in turn."

A modest laugh from the dragon was not unlike thunder. The planeswalkers made wary smiles. Niv-Mizzet made a benevolent wave with one forearm.

"I'll take it into account."

Chandra broke in again. "Seriously, wait, what do you mean 'cycle'? Do you just change your bits back and forth every so often?"

Niv-Mizzet planted her forelegs and bent her neck, talons scratching against the stone floor as she lowered a head larger than Chandra's entire body to stare pointedly at her.

"You're very clever, human, and I expect you to be around for at least a few centuries instead of being a tragic little flicker like most of your kind. It's always encouraging to see people who have a lifespan closer to mine, who have a chance to develop some… perspective. And yet, we're both moving through life at one second per second, inhabiting one place at a time (unless I can get X83B77J working). Which means that I have an _extraordinarily_ large number of better things to do with my time than to explain the difficult and majestic details of dragon gender to you."

Chandra laughed: a single loud "Ha!" with a sad note to it.

"Dragonlady, you are the only person in the room who thinks I'll make it that long. Maybe you can talk with Lily about perspective. I've got my own perspective. Don't talk down to me about yours."

"I already know that she's looking for life unending. You just haven't yet admitted that that's what you're doing."

She jabbed a forefinger in the dragon's direction and raised her voice.

"I am living my own damn life, my own damn way. I accept that it's dangerous. I chose that for myself. I am living, loving, and likely as not leaving a smoking fuckin' crater when I go. Hey, maybe it'll be an educational kind of explosion, yeah? Maybe it'll be valuable to your fuckin' research! Maybe you can add it to your vast fuckin' _perspective!_ "

Chandra's hair burst into flame towards the end, and she'd waved her fists up and down more than once. Jace flinched. Liliana stepped forward and crisply put a hand on Chandra's shoulder, giving the flames room.

"Honey. You're lit up again. Breathe."

Chandra took a deep breath and unclenched her fists. There was a tremendous rustle of scales as Niv-Mizzet shifted her bulk, sprawling, catlike, and regarding Chandra again.

"I've had decades of feeling like that," she said quietly. "And I've known a lot of humans who felt like that. Lots of them here, guildmages and researchers and dreamers. They all lived and died doing things they _cared_ about. I'll say it this way: I wish for you, sparkbearer, as much time as you can seize for a life you _care_ about. Anything for you but silence, ashes, and bland porridge, yeah?"

Chandra found herself slowly breaking into a smile. Her hair faded to a glow, then fell to her shoulders again with a faint puff of smoke. Liliana rubbed her back firmly, standing behind her and to one side.

"Pretty much. Yeah."

Niv-Mizzet nodded firmly, then turned her gaze to Liliana. Chandra blinked, then followed, turning her back to the dragon.

"Lily?"

Liliana sniffled, one hand raised and a little curled, thumb against her nose.

"Don't leave that crater too soon, okay?"

Chandra stepped forward, hands on Liliana's sides.

"Oh, babe. No. I'm not going anywhere. Dragon's got me figured out, that part where I gotta _care_ about something. I care about you. Lots."

"I care about. I mean. I l- it's - you're - it's been good to have you around. I'd miss you."

Liliana wiped her eyes.

"Lily, babe," Chandra said firmly. "I don't ask this often. You have your own thing going. Clear on your own needs and boundaries. I dig that. But—and hey, admittin' that I'm still worked up and grumpy here," and she spread her arms and snarled, "would it kill you to say 'I love you' once in a while?"

Liliana scowled deeply, eyes still watering.

"You know how much older I am than you are? Have you ever lived as the enemy of powerful people who are literally out to destroy everything you love?" she snapped. "Who are opposed to love as a concept? Who can be described as, again literally, made of betrayal and murder? I happen to be _dealing_ with quite a _few_ of them and it's _difficult_ and you managed to almost get killed _twice_ today and I _love_ you and I don't want to get you _killed!_ "

Jace gently put her hand on Liliana's shoulder, and she heard her own voice.

"Honey. You're lit up again. Breathe."

She whirled, dress whipping around, practically shrieking at Jace.

" _What_ was that?!"

Jace stared at her levelly, the white lines on her face glowing faintly. A thin, sarcastic smile was on her face as she pressed her hands together.

"You asked a question just now. As it happens, I _have_ lived that way. I live that way now. The fight that Vraska sprang on us wasn't just about you. She's been after me for a while now. And because I'm strong, I have good plans, and I'm hard to come after, she goes after people who aren't, but who I care about. Does this sound familiar? And what I've been doing is building up the people I care about. It drives me up the wall, I promise you, that I can't just choose who I like and who I don't. In maximal honesty, I'm not sure how much I'd like you if it were a matter of perfect, rational choice. But the world around me isn't rational. All I can do is respond to it rationally."

Jace threw out one arm, pointing, brandishing it in the air, as her voice rose.

"I equip the people I love to make the best decisions they can. When I love someone, it's about building something and about discovering something—something that wouldn't be there if we weren't bringing it into existence it as peers. For them to make decisions exactly as good as I want them to make, I'd have to make all their decisions for them. As it happens, I am a genius. By every plane's hells, Niv-Mizzet is a genius among geniuses. Neither of us are smart enough to make that work, neither is anyone. And you love _Chandra._ You love Chandra Fucking Nalaar, mistress of explosions, kindler of passions, _planeswalker._ When you love Chandra The Fucking Firebrand Nalaar, you are in love with someone who _can take care of herself._ "

Liliana took shivering breaths, glaring at Jace, but not replying. Chandra blinked a few times at the blue mage.

"I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said about me," she noted quietly.

Jace nodded and made a polite little gesture to her, then spoke to Liliana again.

"So. I'm not going to _tell_ you to change how you do things: that is not a tactic that results in Liliana Vess changing how she does things. Another thing Chandra and I have in common, is that we get that you need to be the commander of your own life. But I am going to suggest that in terms of making it difficult for your enemies to mess with you, you will find that your effort is most rewarding when it's invested in things _other_ than assuming that experienced planeswalkers can't take care of themselves. I'm going to propose that while we don't make the same choices as you would about what is and isn't safe, Chandra and I are still actively making choices, and that those choices do involve you and how we feel about you and how we want to stay around because we like you."

She glanced at Chandra, who nodded vigorously.

"Hell yes."

Jace put her hands forward, palms up, and counted on the fingers of one hand.

"So. That was a suggestion and a proposal, and I'm going to bring it up to three with a a question: _can_ you just kiss your girlfriend and tell her you love her?"

Lilia had drawn herself up and crossed her arms as she listened, mouth to one side. She stared at Jace for a long moment, then uncrossed her arms and put one hand on her hip.

"I resent you for being right a lot," she said thoughtfully. "It feels like you're trying to control me by out-thinking me and lecturing me. But: Today is not the day where I fight you about that. Let's out-think each other some other day. Today's the day where I try to figure out how Chandra would say something."

She turned and made a bold smile at Chandra that turned abashed as Chandra stared back, eyebrows raised curiously. Liliana took a few deep breaths and wrung her hands.

"Hey Chandra. I love you. Kiss me?"

Chandra lunged forward in an instant, hair igniting just before her lips met Liliana's, one hand on Liliana's nape and another on her ass as she pulled her into a closed-eyes kiss that immediately began to involve tongues, and moments later began to involve moans. Somewhat more moments later, Niv-Mizzet was tapping her claws on the stones with a face of wry amusement, watching Liliana's hands clinging to Chandra's back.

"Seems like that was more or less the right thing to say," Jace mind-whispered to her.

"Mortals," Niv-Mizzet replied with an amused chuckle.

"We do pretty well sometimes."

"You do."

They watched Chandra let Liliana up and embrace her, their heads on one another's shoulders. The dragon raised her eyebrows at Jace.

"You should give the little spark a chance," she suggested. "I think she'd be a good influence on you."

"I'll… take it into account."

**Author's Note:**

> I love NaNoWriMo, but I don't have a novel in me right now. Maybe a novella. As a result, my regular November project is to just spend a bunch of time writing short stories and fearlessly putting them out there. I'm pretty happy with this one - it has the usual flaws of something written quickly and minimally edited, but not more. It also was a _blast_ to write. It's so much fun to write Chandra, Liliana, and Jace bouncing off one another, Niv-Mizzet is Best Dragon, and Vraska, well, if it seems like her last name is "Serket" in this story that's not entirely inaccurate. I'm also happy with Lavinia and Jace's interactions (modeled on Beyer's "[The Gorgon and the Guildpact](http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ur/290)"). 
> 
> It was also gratifying that the deal I made with myself wherein it's acceptable to drag the characters towards my headcanon (hence lady!Jace and nb!Niv-Mizzet) as long as they stay faithful to their color identities, worked out very very well. This is a story that asks you to know a bit about Magic design as well as Magic creative, but I hope it's also a story that rewards you richly if you happen to have read some or all of Mark Rosewater's [many columns](http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/15) about [the color pie](http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr217). The creative center of this story is about Liliana Vess, her relationship issues, and painting her as desirable without being objectified and as sympathetic and reader-identifiable without being less black-mana-flavored. 
> 
> Also, this story certainly would not exist if Doug Beyer hadn't put [a big sloppy kiss for fanfic](http://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/76875060992/what-do-you-think-of-mtg-fanfiction-more-specifically) on his tumblr. So although of course he can't read it - thanks, Doug. Thanks also, of course, to my pals who beta-read this and gave feedback such as " _Tsundere harder, Liliana!_ " ❤


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